Tag Archives: change

I can only imagine what Hillary Clinton’s camp is thinking right now. This is an election that i think she assumed would be an easy win. Afterall… that Trump guy is crazy! Right?

Well.. Maybe Donald Trump IS crazy. Mabye he is a pathological narcissist. Maybe Donald Trump is a sexist and a biggot. But maybe the people of the United States would rather roll the dice with him than end up with someone who already has manipulated this election to be able to make it to the finals.

Had the democratic party actually LISTENED to their people instead of listening to who was giving the biggest payoff, and had Bernie Sanders win the primary like the American people wanted… We would NOT be in this unbelievable situation now.

This election should always have been between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. (Bernie would have swept the floor with Trump I would put money on it.) …But because Mrs. Clinton and her career politician moves, the entire democratic party is going to lose NOT ONLY President but also the Senate and Congress and the Supreme Court! Now i think if the big boys at the top behind Mrs. Clinton’s election would have taken their heads out of their asses and voted with the mindset of the people they are SUPPOSED to represent we would not be facing 4 years of Donald Trump running our country into a capitalist’s dream but have actual intelligence in the lead office with Bernie running the show. But alas… The people had to be the ones to send the message and unfortunately Mrs. Clinton’s camp made sure that Bernie was nowhere around when that time came and the people had to vote Trump cause they did not like the way Clinton corruptly does business.

Let us take this time and this upset in American Politics to really review why we are still using the system that is in place now. We need to remove not only Super Delegates but also the Electoral College. It is antiquated and does not clearly represent the people wishes. This is 2016. Why can the peoples popular vote not count as the votes for the country? I believe this country keeps it the way it is because it is very confusing and technically makes it so the American public does not have a voice. Only electoral college and super delegate’s have the power to be heard. We are told our vote counts but really it doesn’t. And it SHOULD!!!

I am thoroughly disgusted by politics all the way around at this time. The one chance that the big wig’s up there in charge could have showed the people that they were being heard, they go ahead and throw the election just to get their croney to be able to “keep her place as the next president”. Well the people didn’t want Hillary Clinton in office, and they would not listen, so instead the American people had no choice but to vote for the other candidate.

I am so angry with how Americans are STILL getting scammed by their own politicians who are suppose to be representing THEM! We need to repeal Citizens United which was passed in 2010. We need to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which ruled to allow unlimited political spending by corporations. This ruling said that it would be unconstitutional for limits to be placed on corporations because it would “limit how they could communicate, thus limiting their First Amendment rights”. And until that happens, it is only big money that is going to have much voice in our future elections… and we all know that it isn’t the people who have the power of big money. It is the corporations who have that luxury.

Before i shut up… let me take a minute and say that i think we should really think about what is happening to our country and our political system. I don’t feel like anyone really thinks that good candidates were given as an option after Bernie was bamboozled out. What is the future of America going to do if we can not be heard through our votes? Isnt it time for us as Americans start revamping the failing voting system that is 200+ years old?

Well tonight i think America was heard. Heard loud and clear. We are SICK of career corruption with politicians. We need to clean up house and rebuild it behind glass where the whole system is open for scrutiny. We need Sunshine type ordinances put in place to make the entire game of politics have to face oversight and transparency by the people who pay their salaries. …It seems all we have now is an industry that makes it legal to be a criminal. I know that corruption is going to always go hand in hand with politics but we can keep it to a limit. Make our politicians know we are watching them.

Mr (dare i say President) Trump, PLEASE dont screw us! (ALL of us!!) (if you are indeed the winner which i should state that as of now only 89% has been tabulated but Trump leads with 244 electoral votes to Clinton’s 215).

Now as for Mrs Clinton. My suggestion to you is to make Bill give you a foot rub and pour you a nice hot bubble bath so you can finally relax and get a good night sleep. You can sleep in too… seems tomorrow, you might have the day off … and the day after… and the day after that…. It will give you plenty of time to reflect on where you went wrong.

This is not and has not usually been the case for me. Nope. Instead, i can see that things are really good right now and they are changing and the changes are not ideal. I realize when i am living in one of the apex’es of my life… On the verge of a new, darker dawn. A time where things are now as intelligent and as open as they may ever be. I can see a new dawn before me, yet i am still standing in yesterday or what is today.

It is a strange feeling to be living in what feels more like a memory than the now. Usually when i think of the right now… it feels exciting and innovative and current. But sometimes it feels like the now is the yesterday or yesteryear. The golden era that once was… the good ol’ days. And it feels like right now is actually part of the past because I know what the future is looking like.

Usually when i have this kinda like reverse deja vous, it makes me very melancholy and i just wish i could push that button on that stopwatch so I can just stop time before things move into this new outline i see before me. Like a line drawing that is about to be colored in. That is what the future feels like. You know what it is going to be (in its simplest form) and you know what these changes are going to do to the reality that you have grown your life around and into. You know that big things are about to change. Drastically.

The familiar markers that you thought were a part of the landscape that was a permanent fixture of the main picture. You thought that certain infrastructures as a part of the fabric that you have come to count on would be part of that picture forever. That, without that part of the landscape infrastructure, it would or could never survive. That it has relied on these components for so long that you assume that it is and will be like that forever.

I think that this is an optimistic and naive perspective and not surprising from someone who’s generation has never seen the face of a drafted war or famine.

I am sure that all of those jewish people who were just living their lives in Germany, going about their business like they had been doing for generations were caught off guard when all of a sudden their friends and colleges were being harassed and eventually moved into ghettos. They never thought that that would be their reality or that they would not be doing what ancestors had been doing for generations. No, Their reality and future was MUCH much different. They would be fighting for their lives with many of them losing that fight, and the ones that managed to survive, their towns, and their families and communities did not.

My point is this… What if those German Jewish people were able to see what was in store for them before it was actually become a reality? It would make one despondent yet so desperate to try and capture the reality before the darkness. To remember it and keep it with you for always.

But that makes one not really interact within their lives. Because it feels more like interacting with a scene on a set. You cant really dig roots or make any plans for one’s future when that future is so different and unknown. What do you do?

I think this has been how it has been for me for a good portion of my life. At least my adult life. I think that this is EXACTLY why i have never gotten married or had any children and i think it is a huge contributing component to why i have suffered depression so severely over the past 20 years. It can be a never ending downwards free fall of despondence. Along with that guilt and a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia.

I guess i am saying that it is a very weird feeling to be having a lifetime apex moment and at the same time being so totally aware that things will never be better than this very moment and you can not hold onto it. It is elusively slipping away as the seconds tick by. It kinda feels a little bit out of body experience.

Views over Plaza Cataluñya. Modern apartment for sale in Barcelona|LFS3064 (Photo credit: lucasfoxbcn)

I dont know why some smart little city near sf (maybe like foster city over on the bay side or somewhere like that…) does not decide that they are going to invest in a portion of town and build luxury living (renting) and luxury dining for this part. Clearly we need another place that these tech workers would consider living other than the city or there will be nothing but only tech and advertising highly paid kids living in the city. They are young and quite wealthy (at least bringing in large paychecks) and want the lifestyle of luxury and modernity and hip swank. Continue reading →

I have been avoiding this post for some time now. I guess i just did not feel it right to write about someone who i know is going to read a post about themselves and it is about dying, but this is just too big of a topic in my life right now to ignore any longer. It is also something that is being discussed openly now between ourselves so i suppose it is time to talk about it here.

I always would ask, which would be worse, being like my grandma on my moms side who passed away earlier this year, having dementia and losing your memory but still healthy as a horse? (She would take long walks but often not know where she walked once she got there!), OR be like my great aunt on my dads side (and my dad just the same), to be sharp as a tack up until the very end but have the body TOTALLY break down in the process. So, is it better for your mind to go or your body to go??

I have gone back and forth with this over the years. I used to say that severe pain would impact the choice of body breaking but there is something to be said for having your wits till the end. It is a hard choice to make and thankfully, fate or the gods are the ones that decide that for each of us if we are lucky enough to grow old and die from it.

I know life is an ephemeral and fleeting and nothing lasts forever, so why are we so hard wired to not want those around us to ever leave us? We all know logically that we are only guaranteed 2 things in life. 1. We get a ticket to planet earth when we are born, and 2. we get a ticket home when its time to go. I like to see it as “vacation on planet earth”. Your vacation can go one of two ways… really good or really bad. It can be influenced by where you have to take your vacation but it does not make it a guarantee that you will have a fabulous or terrible vacation simply due to location. However, if you get chosen to “soul up” a body in Darfur, your chances of having a super fun and easy vacation are probably going to be hard to come by. But, that doesnt mean that you can not hopefully change the location and improve your trip. On the other hand, you could be “souled in” to a body of a multi-millionaire’s baby and be brought up with all of the luxuries that one could imagine and be isolated or treated so poorly that it does not matter because your vacation on planet earth is just one nightmare walking amongst priceless artifacts and long cold hallways. I think that is why happiness has much less to do with economics than it does with community.

Anyway, back to my original issue. The thing that is so tough right now is… well, several things… But, one of them is that there are questions that can only be answered by them and this is your last chance to ask them. What is it that i need to ask? Once they are gone, the information they hold in their brains goes too. You only have this chance to ask all of the questions that only this one person can answer. AND you can not think of the questions that should be asked. (i think this is one of Murphy’s laws (btw… who the heck is Murphy anyway?? Poor bastard must have had the most frustrating life!!).

The other thing that is so tough is letting the sick person see that you are effected by their sickness. I do not want to cry to their face because i am so gutted that i am losing one of the most important and influential people in my life. I want to appear strong so not to scare them. I do not want them to see how hard it is for me because i can only imagine how hard it is for them.

I feel like time is going in slow motion, yet it is blazing past me and with each minute that ticks by, is one less minute i am on earth with them.

I think it would be so much easier on our psyches if we knew what happened to us after passing. If you are religious, you probably automatically believe what you are told to believe. However, since we have other things that we experience here on earth that we have no explanation for that could possibly tie into our souls local’s upon vacating the body (such as remembering past lives, old souls and ghosts) that it adds a variable of the unknown and hope i think that something is in place for us. I do not think we are comforted by the thought that after dying our soul just evaporates and vanishes. How could something so strong as a soul which assisted our will to live while in life, and is invisible anyway, just disappear. I think (maybe just for convenience) we like to think that there is a place for our souls to go after this life. The not knowing is the tough part, but also i suppose the part that keeps us as simple people and not as the mighty “God” which i think in life, we forget sometimes.

I know i am not really making any specific point here, but i just need this to start the conversation that i have on loop in my head. My dad is dying. He is my best friend and probably the one single person that influenced who i have become more than anyone else so far in my life. We all know it and we are talking about it (which is very strange when it is with the person who is doing the dying!) I thought it would be more uncomfortable talking the hard real truth’s with him but now that we are here, it is not hard, it is just so scary and sad.

I know that this is just the natural cycle of life and that if it did not happen, then we would have something really to worry about! But it doesnt make it any easier at all. This is a game changer for me. It is usually for most of us even if we do not have a very good or any relationship with our parent.

In what way my life and personality will be affected is unknown to me at this point. In fact the impression will be so huge, i dare not even speculate, but i do know that it will change my life.

I suppose when we experience loss, in a way, the gods are clearing out our lives and throwing us out into the unfamiliar world again to start anew but with newly found or understood skills to make the next path taken with a slightly different approach or a different set of desires.

Usually when i find myself in these types of places of rebuilding after major loss, i have found that when it is time to get up and go after those things i want out of life, the wants and the things and the needs have changed. Always they have simplified and become much more basic of wants and needs. It allows you to appreciate all that you were unable to realize while spoiled and familiar with the past experiences.

I am not (obviously) not looking forward to the soon future without the protection and love and friendship of my dad, but i embrace who i will become and what he has taught me once he is gone. I am just so lucky and blessed to be able to have the time now to ask those last important things as well as getting some things sorted out and understood which will make our job after he goes a lot easier and a lot less stressful. For that i am eternally grateful!

Regardless, it sucks how much we miss the ones we love once they are gone! At least, hopefully for me, the pain will help to create new art. And i can say that it is because of my dad that i made it on this occasion!

I love you dad!!

My dad this past year. Love you Pops! (sorry for doing a post about you:)

Sometimes when i dont write, it is because i am not sure how to describe how i feel or maybe where i feel i (we) are right now. It feels like we are in the middle of two peaks. The lul if you will. An in between time. A pause in the old world right before the world changes. And i feel that the world is about to really change.

I sit here almost mourning it. As if it has already come and gone. It hasen’t, but it will be soon. This i know. So i just sit here. Enjoying, absorbing, living every second. It is bitter sweet in a somewhat melancholy way. It shouldn’t be. But it is none the less.

This is a really hard thing to try and put into words and i dont know if i have been able to in any sort of cohesive way that anybody might be able to understand, but i just tried.

If i have made no sense to you, chalk it up to another crazy ramblings post. If you know what i mean, then, sit back and enjoy the time, now, before the world is to change!

I was born in the early half of the 1970’s. Things were SO different back then. Not the obvious… I played as a kid, i went to school, i did the family obligations, i had friends, i went to sports practice and games and girl scouts… you get the picture….

What was so different is HOW i played as a kid, and Why i went to school, and What my family obligations were etc.

It was a much slower time back then. AND a time with SO MUCH LESS unwarranted fear. So much more communication and planning.

You couldn’t just go by the ATM machine when you got low on cash, you had to make sure that you made it to the bank before 4:30 and if not, you wrote a lot of checks (and probably cashed one at the grocery store!).

You had to have LOTS of patience when trying to reach someone, because, the answering machine had not been invented, nor the cordless phone. This meant that you let the dang thing ring for at least 30 rings just incase they were in the yard, bath etc. There was no caller ID so if you just missed the call, you would have to just sit there wondering who it was and if and when they might call back.

Back then, we could play unsupervised. This meant OUTSIDE. Now, we had markers that were supposed to corral us into not wandering too far (not farther than the field at the end of the Petersen’s lot type thing), but this freedom gave us not only the freedom to adventure and discover, but it gave us an independence that i think carries into the rest of our lives.

Things just moved slower because they had to! Which ultimately meant we all lived with more patience. You had to have patience because if you needed to reach someone, you just had to wait, hope and keep trying.

Meals were simple and nutritious. You know, like a lunch with a pbj sandwich, carrot sticks, cheese and crackers and a milk or juice or something to that effect.

I remember as a kid, you had to get creative (in your own mind!) when it came to playing inside. We had no video games, or vcr’s or dvd’s. For god sake, we did not even have any cable tv. We had 3 network tv channels and 1 public broadcasting station. THATS IT! so, tv was not really that much of a deal.

Instead, we had things, like board games, and Light Bright and even musical instruments to have a marching band through the house. My brother had a chemistry set and an erector set that we would play with and i had Linkon Logs and a tutu!

I would go picking wild flowers and then leave them on the front porch and ring the doorbell and run and hide every May 1 (may day!). And i was sure that my mom couldn’t have known who had done it! lol.

We had a dog and a cat and a bunch of fish, a few hamsters, a gunny pig and a few turtles not to forget a couple of parakeets over the years. My dog and cat were with me my entire childhood so they were also played with a lot.

I still played with dolls (which i would walk down to the creek in their little stroller:) but i also played with Star Wars action figures with my friends usually the boys.

I lived deep in the redwood forest near Santa Cruz, so i was more isolated than most of my friends that lived in town… So, it was somewhat lonely for me out there and what i am sure i would have said extreem bordom… but that ended up being beneficial to me to have lived through, now in modern time. It allows me to escape into isolation and enjoy it.

We had respect and even a little fear of our parents. Not because they ever beat or hurt us, but because we did not want to disappoint them! We had chores. A bunch of them that we had to do before we could make plans or go out and play.

If we were bored, my mom would say, “well, you could clean your room or read a book.” …I managed to find something to do….🙂

The thing that i think my childhood did for me was, teach me that if you work hard, you deserve to reward yourself but not the other way around. And that it is up to me to be responsible and reliable and honest. And if i am, i should feel good about myself no matter what the successes and failures i may encounter.

I was taught to love, and trust (when it is earned) and to show respect. Not only to myself but to others around me.

I was taught not to be ungrateful for what i dont have because SO many people on this plannet would do anything just to have those same situations… and that things could always be worse so look on the bright side.

Most importantly, i was taught not to take for granted so much that i am so blessed for. We get so caught up in all the things that we cant have or didnt get or achieve…

That is not the way to see the world. If you are healthy and have people who love you and do not have to live in constant fear and have the freedom to make your own decisions, then …LIFE IS GOOD!!

Take that with you today.. It is so easy for us to get bogged down and feel the weight of all of the bs of life on our shoulders, but for one day, dont. Dont let it get you down, because you have got it REAL GOOD!! Enjoy it for a day for a change! All that bullshit will still be there waiting for you tomorrow… take a day off and enjoy this beautiful planet with all of its beautiful life and colors and forms. Simplify. Life really is good even if you have a bunch of bills that need to be paid!